


The Color of Sunsets

by thefaceofhoe



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mentions of the Time War, Missing Scene, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 13:45:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9494078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefaceofhoe/pseuds/thefaceofhoe
Summary: After the battle in Utah, the Doctor sort of vanishes into the background. The TARDIS sends Rose to talk to him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladysugarquill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysugarquill/gifts).



> Prompt from a friend: Rose seeing the Doctor ’s room for the first time. I wrote this years ago for a secret Santa fic for ladysugarquill and I am just now posting it here.

Rose didn’t think that she was supposed to be able to find the Doctor’s room, but she blamed the TARDIS.

It wasn’t her fault. It hadn’t even occurred to her that the Doctor had a room, not one to sleep in, anyway.

But it had been a long day, and she’d seen the trauma brought back out of the old battle wounds, running sharp and potent and “Oh, Rose. They’re all dead.” It had made her heart churn.

She felt the TARDIS nudging nearly as soon as she’d gotten Adam settled in, and had followed it as you would a cat rubbing around your ankles.

Rose was led to an unremarkable door. She went to knock, but it quietly slid open for her on its own.

The walls looked more like tent canvas than painted walls, but not quite, and layered in earthy reds and golds and oranges, like muted autumn leaves. There was no bed, only a large armchair.

She spotted him in the glow of the lanterns, hanging from the tall ceiling like dimmed fairy lights. He was hunched over his desk, his angular face hidden in shadow. His leather jacket was slung over the back of his chair. He stiffened when she knocked on the already open door

“Rose?”

“Yeah,” she said softly, shifting from foot to foot.

“What’re you doin’ here?”

“I just wanted to, you know-”

“Thought you’d be showing your pretty boy the sta-”

“-see if you were alright?”

He stared at her, watched as she twisted a thin lock of peroxide hair taut around her finger. “Ah.”

“This your room?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“Not as excitin’ as you’d hoped, then?” Rose couldn’t tell if his tone is amused or testy. Perhaps shades of both.

“No… Different.”

“Good different, or bad different?”

“Just different.”

“Huh.”

Rose let her hair spin off her finger. “What happened in the bunker, earlier, I wanted to check on you.” She saw his shoulders hunch defensively. “I know you’re not alright Doctor, so don’t go lyin’, alright? An’ that’s okay, if you’re not… I just, I know that when I get- like after we watched my dad die. I wanted my mum or someone there with me.”

“This is different. And you’re not my mum, Rose.”

“Didn’t say I was.”

Hesitation. “…Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

More silence. He saw her move towards him in his peripheral, could just imagine her biting her lip in that way she had that made the bottom of his stomach drop out. He shifted in the dimness; she could see more of him now. He looked so much smaller without his leather jacket. Slowly, like she was worried he’d shy away, she folded her arms around him.

The Doctor relaxed, smelled the strawberry shampoo in her hair, felt the fast beating of her warm, human heart.

“You don’t hafta talk all the time. I’m not gonna ask if you don’t want me to,” she told him quietly.

“Gallifrey.”

“What?”

“That was wha’ it was called. My planet. I had to destroy it.”

She could barely speak. “You?”

“My family, my home, for all of creation. Cos it’s my job, ‘course. Always is, to save creation.” The Doctor’s voice was bitter and rough and so hard it was near danger of breaking.

Her mouth tasted like cotton wool and her stomach flipped over in sickening empathy. “I’m a-”

“Stop,” he ordered, and to his horror, his voice creaked. “Don’t say you’re sorry, not like you understand.”

She nodded, gently, lashes downcast, still holding him, still smelling of artificial strawberries. “I won’t.”

He quivered and after a moment hugged her back. They’re silent in the light that almost resembles the burnt orange of long ago afternoons.


End file.
